Overthinking the Meaning of Drop-Down Menus

Illustration: Adam Haynes

Online, we’re free—as never before in history—to create ourselves and be ourselves. That is, until we have to fill out a form. The fact is, the Internet mirrors society as much as, if not more than, it liberates. The proof? Drop-down menus. When a website constrains the choices of honorifics or professional specialties, it’s not asking us who we are; it’s telling us who we’re allowed to be. And the range of options is always edifying.

Matters of gender are where you see it the most. High-flying professional women, for instance, may find no more satisfying way to shatter the glass ceiling than to soar through it on a private jet. But Mrs. is the only feminine honorific on jetmaker Bombardier’s sales-rep contact form. Oprah must have gritted her teeth when she bought her Global Express XRS from the company.

For couples, results are all over the map. Mission: Dignity, the charitable arm of GuideStone (“Financial services guided by Christian values”), allows Dr. and Mrs. but no Dr. and Mr. Married doctors (and judges and reverends) who are straight women or gay men are out of luck. (Lesbian couple in which one partner is a doctor? You’re good.) And it’s no surprise that Doctors Without Borders offers five Dr. combinations, as well as pairings of Mr. and Mr. or Ms. and Ms. For the Mrs. and Mrs. combo, though, you have to go to the online donation form of the gay-rights group PFLAG.

Titles turn out to be another cultural minefield. Even now, in wartime, regrettably few websites offer military ranks, for example. Catholic Charities USA does, including GySgt (Gunnery Sergeant, but you knew that). Ambassadors and chief justices can also donate with ease, as may rabbis (though not swamis or mullahs). For a panoply of ranks, as well as titles like Governor and Sister (wait, what?), it’s back to PFLAG. But no site summons the majesty of London’s Royal Opera House website. It makes room to sign on as Dowager Marchioness. Or as Queen.

The airlines do their best to please everyone (or at least to please no one equally). But culture soaks through. Some British carriers offer Sir; others cover lords and ladies. Lufthansa has a slot for Herr Professor Doktor. But US carriers? Not so much. Check out famously all-one-class Southwest: zero titles but a constellation of pleasingly meritocratic suffixes, including CPA, DO (osteopath), and DPM (podiatrist … or is it Data Protection Manager?).

If there’s a lesson here, it’s that no list can ever be long enough. True revolutionaries might see all the confusion as an opportunity to eradicate titles. But a less radical solution is offered by Debretts, publisher of Britain’s ancient guides to manners, taste, and “people of distinction.” On its site, of all places, there are no drop-down titles to define and confine, just an empty box. So come up with something good. Grand Vizier? Empress Regent? Darth and Mr.? It’s your box, and it’s achingly blank.